Thirty years ago, coaches often talked about the pressure of the job. They likened it to constantly being under a microscope, every move watched, every victory a step closer to job security.

They had no idea.

Coaching today appears to be more difficult than it ever was, as the situations with Mike Rice at Rutgers and Bill Holowaty at Eastern Connecticut show. The eyes on every aspect of the job are more numerous. What might have been considered normal behavior for a coach two decades ago might be considered abhorrent today.

Then again, what a coach did two decades ago wasn't splattered all over television or social media. What was considered sacred, internal information then is now out for everybody to digest. The coaching environment has changed drastically.

"What makes players and people give them the ability to perform in a high-stress situation is being put in a high-stress situation," said Seymour High principal Glenn Lungarini, who played for Holowaty from 1995-98. "It allows you to learn from that and grow. In today's environment, being put in those stressful situations is looked at as a negative. Yes, Coach Holowaty would push you, but he never did it without an element of support. That's something that gets overlooked today sometimes."

Lungarini said that some of Rice's behavior at Rutgers — putting his hands on players, throwing balls at them — went beyond the bounds of acceptable. He also said that Rice's transgressions might have put an even greater microscope on what coaches do.

Holowaty's issues appear to have been brewing for some time. He had been suspended in the past for behavior deemed unacceptable. The question now is whether the line delineating acceptable from unacceptable moved quite a bit.

Of course, there's also the common sense aspect of coaching. For some coaches, the drive to win sometimes gets in the way of that. Some of Holowaty's former coaches and players have said that his drive to win blinded him to common sense. The coaches who let their emotions overtake common sense are likely a small minority. Younger coaches are also typically more in tune with the social media aspect of things.

"Coaches have evolved to understand the technology that's out there," Post University sprint football coach Mike Mannetti said. "You have to have some common sense about what's right or wrong, and about what could get out for everybody to see. If you don't know that, you won't have a job for very long.

"With Twitter and Facebook, you have to watch what you put out

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there. It's totally changed. There could be something you say in practice that a kid puts on Twitter. The next thing you know, you're being investigated."

Former Pomperaug High athlete Brent Pelella is a sophomore on the Eastern Connecticut baseball team. He also writes a blog on college and pro basketball, in addition to covering recruiting and acting as an assistant basketball coach at St. Thomas More. He recently found out the power of social media when a Twitter account lampooning Holowaty's myriad sayings appeared.

"It was kind of comic, all this stuff he said in practice and meetings and stuff," Pelella said. "We got in big trouble. Anything you put on there can be seen by anybody around the world. It's just a different age now with what coaches have to do. You have to make sure you're respecting them and their peers and they have to make sure they're respecting you."

Pelella wound up on a committee at Eastern that restructured the athletic department's social media policies. The restructuring included guidelines for athletes and coaches alike.

As an aspiring college basketball coach, Pelella will go into the profession with a greater understanding of today's coaching environment. Bad behavior cost Rice, who was in a relatively high-profile job, and it could cost Holowaty, who, despite his enormous success, isn't too well known outside the borders of Connecticut.

Coaches just can't do what they might have done 20 or 30 years ago no matter the level. Coaches who are old-school in their approaches might find themselves looking over their shoulders and coaches who are in touch with the new environment have to constantly be aware of it.

Ultimately, coaching is coaching. There have always been things coaches can and can't do, and those haven't really changed. What has changed is the sacred nature of things. What goes on within a team rarely stays inside that team.

"It's a fine line," Mannetti said. "There's still that respect between coaches and players. If I'm talking to a kid and I slip up and drop a word that is not acceptable in all facets of society, the kids understand it is not directed toward them in a negative fashion.

"We don't have the time, to be perfectly honest, to be going crazy on kids. There's no time to go off on tangents and throw footballs and grab helmets. We just can't."

For some coaches, the microscope has become more intense. For many others, such as Prospect's Eric O'Toole, a former Sacred Heart standout and assistant varsity and head junior varsity baseball coach at Derby High and another of Holowaty's former players, not much has changed.

"If you're doing this the right way and respecting the players," O'Toole said, "then you don't have anything to worry about."

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